Yes that makes sense, I used to do so much training in zone 2 when I was racing but I’ve reduced this massively now I don’t have so much time (around 8 hours a week) and have been doing lots of sweet spot but I think I’m going to dial down the intensity and see how it goes for a couple of months. After a winter of zone 2 I used to be flying for the first races of the season.
Hi, sorry, can you tell me what you define as tempo either from a HR or power perspective?
Yeah, that’s really what the cap is about.
to clarify, you are saying “use HR even if it means turning sweet spot into tempo” and that is my interpretation too.
From the guy that came up with FTP and power based training, my understanding is that interval duration at FTP power and below is NOT highly individual:
That chart shows when power is % of FTP, there are small individual differences in how long someone well trained can ride at FTP and below. The big individual difference are clearly seen on interval duration at vo2max power levels and above. It just seems to me that these conversation are freely playing around with terms like “sweet spot” and “tempo” by adding someone’s % HRmax into the conversation.
If FTP is too high then sweet spot is really tempo. Lets assume that means you are anaerobically strong and aerobically weak, and going back to the chart above it doesn’t apply on longer durations because your aerobic system is not well trained. So you need to work on aerobic system and get it to a well trained state. Step 1 is to get an accurate FTP, and focus on extending duration of tempo and sweet spot intervals. Include in some endurance work. Extract max gains from that aerobic block, which may require repeating as aerobic gains take time. Once you’ve maximized gains it is time to move on to developing another energy system, and move toward more race specific training. All the while you need to keep maintaining aerobic system with long endurance/tempo rides. That is my read of the philosophy we are discussing.
Looking back at the past I’ve estimated ftp using longer 30-60 minute testing… Fair to assume my FTP is pretty accurate given the testing. My “true sweet spot” intervals routinely exceed 83% HRmax late in each interval (as high as 88-89%). And I was able to complete TR’s SSB-1 HV and end week 5 with a personal best 2.5 hour HC climb. Limiting tempo or sweet spot efforts based on HR doesn’t make sense to me, but I have an open mind.
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LOL, ya thats backwards. If your FTP is set too high, then tempo is SS, SS is threshold, etc.
On that SSB-1 HV block it started at 236W and ended at 247W for roughly 5% gain. What I’ve learned is that after a block or two of tempo/sweet spot, I naturally hit a ceiling of around 250W and my vo2max is the limiter for further gains (FTP is 88-90% of pVO2max). How is lowering HR a tick or two going to help here, if I’m only going to hit the vo2 ceiling?
This year I’ve already done one tempo block and while TB1 and TB2 did allow my vo2max to float up reasonably high, vo2max is still stubbornly too low to allow my FTP to go above 250W (FTP roughly 88-90% of VO2max power).
Doing more endurance and tempo to push vo2max up from below takes a really really long time, like a year or two project involving a lot of volume. The answer for someone like me is intensity, while also embarking on a long-term project to raise volume (low-intensity). Last time I punched thru 250W ceiling it took a month or more of about 30% training in vo2max and above. And to avoid another knee injury, that requires getting more durable. So I’m focused on more strength training and tempo work to establish that durability and prepare the body for the intense stuff.
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Thanks for sharing this experience. I believe I am in a similar boat. I’m really getting quite comfortable at long sweet spot work now but need to work on the V02 stuff
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As far as my knowledge goes, your philosophy is right.
The very basic overview of Steve’s methodology (again, to the extend of my knowledge right now), is to build your aerobic fitness using lower end work up to the point where you are no longer seeing any/much improvement in your training load based on amount of time that you can train in a week. After which you would switch to a block of vo2max to push up your MAP and switch back to tempo/sweetspot work based on your newly improved MAP number (hopefully). None of this is new, in fact, this is the approach that Coach Chad spoke frequently about in general terms.
So how does one increase training load for tempo/sweetspot work assuming you have a fixed number of hours per week? By increasing the interval duration and doing back to back days.
Typically you would be doing tempo/sweetspot on one day and easy endurance the other. When you have increase the interval duration to 1x60min (hypothetically) and hit the time limit that you can spend on the trainer, the next step would be to do 2 days tempo/sweetspot and 1 day easy endurance.
This wouldn’t be applicable to someone that can only spend 2 hours on the trainer per week for example, because you simply can’t get enough volume to elicit much of a training response at that intensity. This is where the TR LV SSB shines, because it packs enough intensity and enough rest to not cause burnouts.
About the 83% HR cap “guideline”, I think it came about as a compromise for athletes that are not willing/unable to do some form of lactate testing where you will be able to get HR/Power at lactate threshold and balance point and use it to guide the workouts. It serves as a form of “safety net” to ensure one does not train at too high an intensity, which will affect your recovery, subsequent workouts and most importantly consistency.
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That makes sense thanks.
I would like to give this a try (tempo training). I am too soft to do a traditional base and I am not too keen to do SSB 2 MV intervals just yet.
I’ve just finished a modified version of SSB 1 MV (basically all SS workouts and some OU, endurance only when it was too much) with 10 days of endurance riding on vacations. Planned two weeks but a fall made an end to it.
Now my question is about the aerobic test. I’ll do a ramp test tomorrow just because this is the test I have been doing and MAP might might be useful later on. I am not planning on doing a Kolie Moore FTP test just yet but was thinking of tackling the aforementioned 30 min aerobic test after about 10 min of easy riding. Would 85% of TR’s FTP estimate be a good start for a power target? I’ll ride it in resistance mode and try to be in the 80-83% of HR peak but a power estimate would certainly help to get there sooner. Other tips on the test are of course welcome! I want to use it as a power guide line for my tempo workouts which I’ll mix with some endurance and perhaps 40/20 VO2Max workouts.
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You’re doing a great job at Flo. I like that you bring on Experts to the show to bring in new viewpoints that we are not necessarily hearing often.
I like the format and personally don’t want you or your team to be the expert on the topic, then we could just listen to your view point.
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I’ll reply to myself if anyone finds it interesting later on or would like to comment on my try.
First, the ramp test. I like two three hour climbs. I hate 130+% FTP on a trainer. That’s not optimal for a ramp test but I couldn’t postpone it any longer. It went okish. I had my FTP set at 290 W before the test and tested 289 W. Oh well 
With the ramp test out of the way I continue with the 30 min aerobic test. The 85% of FTP looks like a very good guess - I averaged 1 W higher and my heart rate was 81.7% of peak. Only when I had to stand for a short while it climbed to 83%.
Finally, finished it off with 2 x 20 min tempo now in the erg mode at a slightly lower cadence and my heart rate went down as well - 79 and 77% respectively.
Overall, I find tempo training quite nice. Not as taxing as sweet spot but not as boring as endurance. I’ll do a couple of weeks before I start mixing in some short VO2Max intervals.
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Thanks for sharing.
The ramp test is a maximum aerobic power (MAP) test, and for starters it I’ve found it sets an upper bound on 5-min vo2max power. If you independently set FTP using a longer test (or by feel on threshold workout), and you might find value tracking FTP as % vo2max (FTP / vo2max-5min). For example at 90% I’ve maxed out gains from sweet spot and threshold (“FTP work”), and its time to do a block of vo2max work. The average range is 80-85%, somebody else might max out gains from FTP work at 85% or 86%.
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Thanks and I am aware of the details of testing and the logic behind it. I was interested in ramp test because I had previous results and I also wanted to do the aerobic test as a basis for my tempo workouts. I won’t do threshold workouts for a while so the FTP testing would be a little superfluous. However, I do think that the FTP estimate that TR uses (75% of CP1 from the test) is in the ballpark for me which than puts my threshold at 83% of MAP. Right in the middle and a opportunity to work on both threshold and aerobic power. Which is kind of a plan with the tempo workouts - aerobic gains together with improved muscle endurance. I hope I can have both 
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More from Steve Neal and others.
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Is it possible to make a custom TR workout public? I like that structure
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Custom workouts can only be shared through the Team function in TR.
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Gotcha, thanks.
It’s really easy to build workouts in the TR workout creator.
Yeah I build them all the time, was just hoping to import that one.
Great discussion. Steve Neal has also been on the Consumate Athlete podcast a couple of times.
After listening to the recent Velonews podcast with him, one thing that dawned on me is that his cycling gym customers are only on the bike twice a week. They do 2 x strength training and 2 x indoor trainer sessions at the gym. Weather permitting, I guess they might do something on the weekend (ski, snowshoeing, fatbike riding).
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